While working on the teacher's load in preparation for the relief duties, I realised that one third of our teachers are heavily loaded. All our beginning teachers are heavily loaded according to the MOE guidelines. To date, we have a lot of young teachers. This is not very healthy as there may not be passing on of good teaching and learning strategies to these teachers, their content knowledge may not be very strong and their fire may fizzle out very fast.
If these continues, the body of knowledge of teaching and learning within the school may not be as rich and it may spiral downwards.
They must have good mentors and these mentors must be told their responsibilities to getting the teachers acclimatised to our school culture as well as keeping their fire burning.
It is painful to see my hard work goes to waste. But upon reflection, I realised that I must not be the only one clear about it's objectives and rationale. The ones using, the one executing must be clear too. And of course the high utility will follow. If nobody is using, then forget it.
For my new team, I must bear that in mind and for my new work, I must make it user friendly. And lucky me, I have a good team who constantly seek clarity of the work involved and the whys....
Good observations (though I am not sure if there are random, neither should they be).
ReplyDeleteIts true that we are in a current state of young teaching staff. And the tried and tested system of Structured Mentoring seems to be challenged on every front.
So, we should look at other systems that will enable our young teaching force to still hone their expertise, keep their fires burning and ignite the dying flames in their senior colleagues.
I look forward to see and read new ideas on this blog that will have the potential to shape lives and thinking across the leadership team, as you often do . And many of our ideas may never see the light of day :) And take heart, your efforts are not wasted. Your efforts persisted in forcing us to keep questioning how we can do it, and do it better. The principles and rationale behind your concept is preserved, just the form has changed, giving ourselves more work :) A good idea is is only as good as it is used.
Keep up the (not random) thoughts anchored on clear philosophies and principles.